AV-Comparatives Real World Protection Test March-June 2014

Comparative tests are just that, tests, so they can have the meaning we want them to have. Some tests try to replicate the conditions a regular computer will face. Such is the case with the AV-Comparatives Real World Protection Test, which run between March and June.

The best products, when faced with 4003 malware samples, failed to detect 5 samples. Among these is my personal favorite, Emsisoft-AntiMalware (which ranked 4th, as on 5 of the samples, user input was request and that is penalized in terms of overall ranking).

It does seem they could be better in comparative terms, when performance is compared. However, does that translate to an observable performance degradation when doing whatever it is that you need to do in your computer? My laptop is a one year old i5 and I don't really notice any meaningful performance issues due to the security apps I use. My laptop has an SSD, though, which may have an impact in terms of performance, for the better, when compared to the baseline system used in the test.